I’m glad I had my arm twisted to watch “Julie and Julia” . . .

if only to behold, within a 2-hour span:

1) the sight of Meryl Streep and an incredible simulation of a mutated Jami-Gertz lookalike laughing and cutting up like a pair of delirious giant cassowaries or Miss Hathaways;

2) the odd sight of Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci sitting together in a tub full of suds;

3) the impressive sight of Meryl Streep boning a duck (a scene done only once before by Lea Thompson in “Howard the Duck,” and with far less deliberation and brutality than by Ms. Streep);

4) a delicious-sounding way to reduce butter;

5) aforementioned duck encased in pastry;

6) Ms. Streep’s superhuman restraint from patting Mr. Tucci’s head like he was Jackie Wright on The Benny Hill Show;

7) a reminder why I’ll eat a poached egg only over my own dead, decomposing body;

8 ) another chance to see the Dan Ackroyd takeoff on “The French Chef” and to laugh harder and in a more-informed manner than the twenty-somethings sitting in front of me (that’ll teach the little bahstahds to look at their cell phone screens while the house lights are off);

9) the spectacle of Frenchmen actually being polite and nice to an American, and;

10) a damn fine recipe for beef boulignon stew.

And to think the young pseudo-adults from my workplace I saw at the theater were saying how much they were gonna get into “G.I. Joe – The Rise of Cobra.”